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EU pro­ject: Tomato skin – a nat­ur­al lin­ing for met­al cans

24.01.2014
The BIOCOPAC pro­ject developed a nov­el bio-lac­quer for met­al food pack­aging designed to meet cur­rent demand for sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion and safety. The pro­ject team expects their innov­a­tion will increase the com­pet­it­ive­ness of the EU’s met­al cans industry, cut unne­ces­sary waste and bet­ter pro­tect con­sumers. The nat­ur­al lac­quer was developed from tomato skins, a by-product that food pro­cessors often treat as waste. The lac­quer can be applied to the intern­al and extern­al sur­faces of cans used for food­stuffs. Met­al pack­aging is often coated to pro­tect the con­tents from the met­al itself which, for example, can lead to dis­col­our­a­tion in some dark-col­oured fruits, or to pro­tect the met­al from acid­ic products such as soft drinks.

Three chal­lenges for Europe

From the very begin­ning, the BIOCOPAC team sought to address three key chal­lenges facing Europe: unne­ces­sary waste, con­sumer safety and indus­tri­al com­pet­it­ive­ness. The pro­ject has made import­ant steps for­ward in all three areas. ​“With regards to the envir­on­ment­al chal­lenge, the devel­op­ment of new food con­tact pack­aging bio-lac­quers from the by-products of tomato pro­cessing will pro­mote the exploit­a­tion of waste by reusing it,” explains pro­ject coordin­at­or Angela Montanari of Stazione Sper­i­mentale per L’in­dus­tria delle Con­serve Ali­ment­ari in Italy. ​“The bio-lac­quer will increase the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of met­al cans, pro­mot­ing their recyc­lab­il­ity and decreas­ing the envir­on­ment­al impact of pack­aging and waste.” Food safety was anoth­er key pri­or­ity. Nat­ur­al bio-lac­quers designed spe­cific­ally for food con­tact pack­aging should help ensure that there is no chance that food will be con­tam­in­ated by the migra­tion of syn­thet­ic sub­stances from the pack­aging to the product. The innov­a­tion is expec­ted to provide can man­u­fac­tur­ers with an envir­on­ment­ally friendly solu­tion they can offer to food pro­cessors world­wide. ​“In the past few years, grow­ing demand for envir­on­ment­ally friendly products has encour­aged the devel­op­ment of the biopoly­mer and bioplastics sec­tors,” says Montanari. She says the BIOCOPAC solu­tion will provide pack­agers with an altern­at­ive to Bisphen­ol A, a car­bon-based com­pound used to coat many food and bever­age cans. Bisphen­ol A has come under pub­lic scru­tiny over claims it affects health. The new BIOCOPAC lac­quer will also be trade­marked, mak­ing its use imme­di­ately recog­nis­able to con­sumers.

Good use of waste

BIOCOPAC’s research began with an ana­lys­is of tomato waste, and con­tin­ued with the devel­op­ment of an exper­i­ment­al meth­od of extract­ing cutin (a waxy ​‘poly­mer’) from tomato peel. ​“We then stud­ied dif­fer­ent for­mu­la­tions of bio-lac­quers suit­able for metal­lic mater­i­als,” says Montanari. Extract­ing raw cutin from tomato peel proved highly suc­cess­ful in terms of yield and applic­ab­il­ity on an indus­tri­al scale. Dif­fer­ent for­mu­la­tions of lac­quer con­tain­ing from 10 % to 100 % cutin were pre­pared and stud­ied to find the ideal for­mu­la­tion for the final bio-lac­quer. ​“The more prom­ising for­mu­la­tions were then applied to dif­fer­ent metal­lic sub­strates – tin plate, tin-free steel and alu­mini­um,” con­tin­ues Montanari. ​“Prop­er­ties such as the degree of cur­ing, appear­ance and ster­il­isa­tion res­ist­ance were meas­ured.” From the ini­tial lacquered sheets, the team was able to pro­duce two- and three-piece cans, crown corks and caps. In every case, the lac­quer demon­strated an excel­lent per­form­ance, she says. As a res­ult of this research, the part­ners plan to file for two pat­ents to be registered. One will cov­er the extrac­tion meth­od for cutin from tomato peel – a meth­od that will prob­ably be developed on an indus­tri­al scale – while the oth­er will cov­er the for­mu­la­tion of the bio-lac­quer. ​“This exper­i­ence has been won­der­ful,” says Montanari. ​“It has giv­en me the pos­sib­il­ity to work in the EU with European part­ners in a very pro­fes­sion­al way, and at the inter­na­tion­al level. Moreover, this pro­ject has provided me with an oppor­tun­ity to see and under­stand that col­lab­or­a­tion between indus­tries and research centres can lead to pos­it­ive res­ults, even in low-tech­no­logy sec­tors such as metal­lic pack­aging.”

Pro­ject details:

  • Pro­ject acronym: Biocopac
  • Par­ti­cipants: Italy(Coordinator), Liecht­en­stein, Spain, France, Greece, Czech Republic
  • FP7 Proj. N° 286446
  • Total costs: € 1 049 476
  • EU con­tri­bu­tion: € 812 497
  • Dur­a­tion: Decem­ber 2011 to March 2014
Source: European Commission
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